Given two absolute paths, e.g.
/var/data/stuff/xyz.dat
/var/data
How can one create a relative path that uses the second path as its base?
Actually my other answer didn't work if the target path wasn't a child of the base path.
This should work.
public class RelativePathFinder {
public static String getRelativePath(String targetPath, String basePath,
String pathSeparator) {
// find common path
String[] target = targetPath.split(pathSeparator);
String[] base = basePath.split(pathSeparator);
String common = "";
int commonIndex = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < target.length && i < base.length; i++) {
if (target[i].equals(base[i])) {
common += target[i] + pathSeparator;
commonIndex++;
}
}
String relative = "";
// is the target a child directory of the base directory?
// i.e., target = /a/b/c/d, base = /a/b/
if (commonIndex == base.length) {
relative = "." + pathSeparator + targetPath.substring(common.length());
}
else {
// determine how many directories we have to backtrack
for (int i = 1; i <= commonIndex; i++) {
relative += ".." + pathSeparator;
}
relative += targetPath.substring(common.length());
}
return relative;
}
public static String getRelativePath(String targetPath, String basePath) {
return getRelativePath(targetPath, basePath, File.pathSeparator);
}
}
public class RelativePathFinderTest extends TestCase {
public void testGetRelativePath() {
assertEquals("./stuff/xyz.dat", RelativePathFinder.getRelativePath(
"/var/data/stuff/xyz.dat", "/var/data/", "/"));
assertEquals("../../b/c", RelativePathFinder.getRelativePath("/a/b/c",
"/a/x/y/", "/"));
}
}